>OK, here is a very elementary question that has always
>stumped me. Is there any difference between an external
>SCSI hard drive made for a Mac and a generic SCSI hard
>drive? Can I hook up a Mac SCSI hard drive to some other
>computer with a SCSI interface and expect it to work (after
>formatting, of course)? What about the other way around?
>
>For some reason or another, I have always had the
>impression that Mac drives had something different about
>them. And, they are always marketed separately.
SCSI drives can be moved either direction, it's just that
SCSI drives provided by Apple were 'blessed' by Apple with a ROM that
provided additional information to the HD setup utility provided with
the OS. Vendors of 3rd party drives that didn't have this ROM had to
provide thier own formatting software specific to the drive or a
generic formatting software such as FWB HD Toolbox (this was even
provided as standard with a number of the Mac-clones, including those
from Power Computing). The Apple ROM drives were still usable on
non-Mac systems just fine. Thankfully, this type of thing is no
longer done with the IDE drives used on the newer Mac's.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
Received on Wed Jan 10 2001 - 04:38:00 GMT